


They Still Hate Eli Manning in San Diego

by Fantasyenabler



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, NFL, This will probably never be completed, don't hate me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-11
Updated: 2013-10-11
Packaged: 2017-12-29 03:43:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1000468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fantasyenabler/pseuds/Fantasyenabler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bones doesn't know what to make of his team's number one draft pick, other than to think he's someone he should stay far, far away from.</p>
            </blockquote>





	They Still Hate Eli Manning in San Diego

Bones doesn't know how he got Pike to talk him into these things. Going to Draft Day was not his idea of a good time, even if it was happening at Radio City Music Hall this year. Oh, people in the league loved to talk about the "drama" that accompanied a big draft, but the truth was everyone knew where everyone was going days, if not weeks, before the actual announcments were made. You very rarely ran into an Eli Manning situation where a number one draft tells a team, "Thanks, but no thanks," these days. And you wouldn't have that day if the player in question didn't have the last name "Manning."

(Bones tries not to let people pull him into talking about that particular draft, which is hard since Eli went to Ole Miss and everyone in the Steelers organization knows Bones did too. He's not going to get into about whether or not what Eli did to the Chargers was wrong or right though. Primarily because he thinks Eli was wrong--but he's not about to talk about a former Ole Miss QB that way, so he's keeping his mouth shut, thank you very much.)

So anyway...Draft Day. Overhyped. Underdrama. Total waste of time.

That is, until the Atlanta Falcons announce that with the number eight pick, they're going to be taking James Kirk, wide receiver, Iowa Hawkeyes.

Beside him, Pike starts cursing up a blue streak. "God damn it! What the hell are they doing? The Falcons don't need receivers! I thought Kirk was going to stick around long enough for him to be ours!"

Beside Pike, one of his assistants starts to hem and haw. "Actually, Coach, they do need receivers, or at least they do as of a couple of days ago. Harry Douglas' knee is worse than anyone thought..."

"I don't care. Kirk was supposed to be ours." He snaps his fingers and yet another no-name assistant coach comes running. "Get me the GM on the phone, now! I want to know what the hell's happened and what they plan to do about it. And I want to know it yesterday!"

No-name assistant number one has started hemming and hawing again. "Um, Coach, you might want to pay attention to what's happening at the podium..."

"What?" Pike turns and Bones turns with him. Up at the podium, there's a bit of a commotion, one that leads to Commissioner Goodell asking someone very loudly, "Is he sure? Well, let me ask this, are you sure that he's sure? Because we need to be sure before I announce this."

The two no-names are standing, and Pike's on the edge of his seat. Bones doesn't want to get sucked in to their drama, so he keeps his eyes fixed on the rest of the room, not watching the podium at all, not watching the podium at all...

Until he has to watch the podium. Because everyone else is.

Commissioner Goodell almost looks embarrassed to be speaking into the microphone so soon. "The Minnesota Vikings still have time left on the clock for the ninth pick. Meanwhile, Jim Kirk has chosen to refuse the offer from the Atlanta Falcons. He says that they can draft him, but he won't play for them."

The room goes silent; then it goes crazy.

Beside him, Pike is punching buttons on a cell phone, while the no-names are running around like madmen.

In his seat, Bones can only think one thing.

Oh, Hell. It's another Eli.

Draft Day just got interesting.

***************************************************

Interesting becomes scandalous as the weeks and months unfurl. Bones makes a very deliberate attempt to keep himself out of the loop, but it turns out to be impossible when even the hot dog vendors at Heinz Stadium know all about Pike badgering the GM into giving the Falcons three future draft picks for the rights to Kirk. The exchange ends up throwing fans in two cities into a total uproar, with Atlanta fans thinking that Kirk just dissed their city the same way that Manning once dissed San Diego, and the Pittsburgh fans thinking, "What the fuck? *Three* draft picks? What crack is the front office smoking?" Sportwriters all over the country join in the fun, of course, with the high point being a message seen on Woody Paige's blackboard on ESPN's _Around the Horn_ : "Jim Kirk /= Eli Manning. Therefore, Steelers' front office = idiots."

(Bones didn't really want to know about that last bit, and could have easily avoided it by just not watching the show. Unfortunately, he actually met Woody Paige at the annual Memphis/Ole Miss game a few years back, and as a consequence of the native Memphian deciding that Bones was "okay for a Rebel," Woody now takes a great deal of obscene pleasure in emailing Bones a compilation of his blackboard messages on a biweekly basis.)

As a result of all of this, Bones really can't plead ignorance when Kirk shows up for training camp, riding a Kawasaki Ninja with no helmet on. As he watches the young man park and dismount, he can't help but shake his head. Didn't the kid bother to learn anything about the team he was going to? Does he know nothing about the motorcycle accident that nearly derailed the Steelers' 2006 season? The fact that his future teammates have already suffered through one of their team's "talent" players being stupid and costing them some success?

Obviously not, if the way he's nonchalantly greeting some of his glaring co-workers is any indication.

Beside Bones, one of the linebackers mumbles, "Somebody, tell Big Ben. He needs to set Farm Boy straight."

And that, Bones thinks, would not be a bad idea. The quarterback took more than his share of grief from the others for his misdeed. If anyone would be able to convince Kirk not to ride during the season, it would be him.

Somebody else is going to have to go suggest it to the guy though.

Bones isn't interested in getting involved in anything to do with the potential train wreck that is James Kirk.

No, Bones isn't interested at all.

Or at least that's what he tells himself.

He's still telling himself that when the kid walks by and throws him a slightly inquisitive smile.

No, he's not interested.

Not interested. At all. 

*********************************************************

The first team meeting of the new season starts an hour later, and Bones is already nursing his third cup of coffee as he leans against the back wall of the locker room with the rest of the medical staff and the physical trainers. One of the rookies that are *not* Jim Kirk reported this morning with a hell of a head cold and a medium-sized panic attack that being sick the first day would result in his being cut the first day. Bones has always hated having to dole out advice with his antibiotics, but somehow he got the kid calmed down and convinced that he was *not* two sneezes away from being put back on a plane to Ogden, Utah.

Or at the least, he got him convinced that if he was so worried about staying on the team, he might want to leave the medical area and stop wasting the team doctor's time with something most people would just take some Sudafed for. Sometimes, it's hard for Bones to tell the difference. Being a counselor was not what he was hired on for.

It's enough to make him wonder once again how the hell he got from wanting to run his own private practice in the South to being a team physician in a too-damn-cold state like Pennsylvania.

Then he remembers the look in his ex's eyes the last time he saw her, sees it in the murky liquid pretending to be coffee, and recalls precisely why heading north any way he could sounded like a great idea.

A shrill whistle pulls his attention away from his coffee cup. "Okay, people." Pike's voice puts a halt to all of the conversations in the room, the man himself suddenly standing and walking away from the corner where he'd been checking in with his offensive coordinator and his special teams coach. "Let's get this meeting started. We've got a lot of ground to cover these next few weeks, and I want to make sure that we all hit it running." The smirk on his face tells all of the new people in the room that yes, he knows that he just made a joke at his own expense, since a man with a pronounced limp like his is hardly going to be running anywhere. "Now, I want to introduce you all to the coaches who are responsible for your various positions, so you'll know exactly whose orders you'd better be following if you want to see to it that you have a future around here..."

Bones has already heard this speech, of course, more than once over the years, so he tunes Pike out in favor of watching the reactions of some of the other people in the room, starting with the two men who've stepped up to stand on either side of their head coach, like two sentries guarding his back. Spock is as cool and calm as ever, Bones notices, wearing the unruffled deameanor that prompted some sportswriter somewhere to dub him "The Machine," an offensive coordinator who keeps his composure no matter how many times an opposing defense gets through to his quarterback or how many times his wide receivers drop passes and ruin his perfectly drawn-up plays. He's been regarded as the master of the unemotional reassessment, able to figure out exactly where plans go wrong and able to adjust without resorting to the self-indulgent screaming so many coaches use. He's also a major part of Pike's success, and despite the fact that Bones doesn't appreciate the man's cold personality, he has to respect him. He's a key reason why the Steelers are currently chasing championship number seven, and so long as he keeps cranking out the plays, no one is going to give him a hard time, least of all Bones.

Or at least, he won't most of the time anyway. He's still planning on getting someone to take a camcorder up into the booth during this year's Ravens game. There is just something about the Ravens' defensive coordinator that makes Spock emotional in a way no one has ever seen before. Of course, it could just be because Coach Nero trains everyone on his defense to take cheap shots and generally play like thugs, but Bones suspects it's more than that. Spock has encountered thugs and bullies before and dismissed them every time. Nero is something special, and Bones hopes his little camcorder experiment might tell him exactly why.

There's no need for a camcorder to figure out the man standing to Pike's left, Bones thinks, as he shifts his attention from the OC to the special teams coach. Scotty is the epitome of the "Crazy Kicker" stereotype, a Scotsman who got recruited back when it was trendy to use soccer players as punters and place kickers, who then became so enamored of the game that he set out to learn every job on the special teams side of the squad. He spent the first few years of his assistant coaching career being laughed at by the rushmen, safetymen, and blockers who protected the kick-offs, punts, and kick returns, but when they soon realized that he knew how to set the lanes with a combination of inspiration and precision they had never seen before, he quickly won them over. Now, he's regarded as "Pike's Miracleman," a coach who realizes the importance of special teams, how they can either bolster or cripple the forward momentum of a team, and sees to it that his players can do what's needed to save a game, from kicking the last minute point to returning a kickoff for a record setting touchdown.

At heart, he's still a kicker though, and it shows whenever he interacts with the two youngsters he started at place kicker and punter last year. Chekhov's like the second coming of Montgomery Scott, a young Russian recruited out of a European soccer league, who's able to compute the exact angle needed for every one of his field goals, regardless of where the offense fucks up and leaves the ball. The boy's executed some unbelievable kicks with mere seconds left on the clock, thriving in the placekicker pressure cooker, with an enthusiasm that just screams that he loves kicking more than anything else in the world. 

Sulu, on the other hand, acts like a frustrated linebacker, a kid who hates the fact that life left him a little too lightly built for his preferred position, and makes up for it by tackling the hell out of any punt returner who makes it past the coverage. Bones knows that there's more than one returner out there in the league who's just waiting for the opportunity to pay Sulu back--Bones can sympathize;what runner wants to have to say that he was tackled by the punter?--but no one on the team is really all that concerned about it. One of of Sulu's many off-field hobbies includes a black belt in Aikido. Any opposing player who wants to try jumping him in a back alley is in store for one hell of a surprise.

Speaking of surprises...a light thump on the wall behind him pulls Bones attention to the dark-skinned woman who's suddenly standing beside him. "Oh, good. I haven't missed that much," Uhura breathes. "He's still in introduction mode." She pulls out a tiny microrecorder and presses a button that Bones can only assume is the record function. "No one's broken tradition and said anything interesting this early in the day, have they? The Digest is sort of desperate for any quotes we can use to make the faithful feel better about this year's crop of rookies."

Bones shakes his head and lifts his coffee cup to hide his smirk. "You know, I don't remember exactly when I became your partner in crime here..."

Uhura grins at him before reaching over to steal a sip of his coffee. "Oh, I don't know. Maybe when you gave me a heads up about that freelancer trying to bribe one of the trainers into lying on the record and saying that we use steroids? Or maybe when you dropped the dime on that rookie boasting about how he could come to practice time and time again with the mother of all hangovers?" She pulls out a Blackberry and does a quick scan of its screen before turning back to Bones. "Face it, my friend. You've been my snitch for a while now, and like it or not, you're going to continue to be. Because we both share the same job. Namely keeping these too-talented idiots from committing acts of stupidity that will damage this team and undercut everyone in here's potential for success."

Bones makes sure his snort isn't loud enough to interrupt Pike's spiel, which has moved on to the part about "emphasizing team objectives." "Some acts of stupidity deserve to come with consequences," he says, thinking about how the Steeler's owner has always been good about immediately dismissing any player who's shown signs of disruptive behavior, such as the aforementioned "party guy." "Still, I'm not sure I like you calling me your 'snitch.' It's likely to give anybody who hears that all sorts of wrong ideas."

Uhura smirks at him as she crosses her arms over her chest. "I know. That's part of why I do it," she says, as Pike gets into the particularly emotional part of his speech, the section that usually involves some very energetic hand gestures. "I have to have some fun around here. Believe it or not, being in PR isn't as easy or glamorous as the romance novels make it out to be."

"I'll have to take your word on that," he says, taking another sip of his coffee, and watching as her posture relaxes and she sinks into giving Pike her full attention. You wouldn't think it to look at her, Bones realizes, with her designer clothes and pricey salon hairstyle, but Nyota Uhura is a grown-up football brat, her father a former defensive lineman who threw her the ball in the backyard and taught her how to take a lineman's stance and how to tackle like a boy three times her size. Aren Uhura has never been a part of the Steelers' organization; growing up in Brooklyn made it a natural for him to get drafted by the Giants and then become a defensive line coach for them as well. But he had no problems with his baby girl moving to Pittsburgh and working for the Rooneys. Instead, he helped her pack her car, offered her gas money, and told her to tell anyone who bothered her that her father still had cousins in Nigeria who'd help him dispose of any necessary bodies.

It helps that Pittsburgh is an AFC team and the Giants are NFC, Bones thinks. If Nyota had wanted to work for the Eagles instead, then he's sure there would have been some objections.

A raised hand causes Pike to pause in mid-speech, and Bones hears Nyota curse under her breath. He doesn't understand why until the questioner steps from behind a couple of the moving walls commonly referred to as offensive linemen and Bones can see who it is. It's Kirk, of course. The reason behind more than half of Nyota's press-related headaches since that fiasco on Draft Day. 

"I'm sorry, Coach," Kirk says, and Bones has to give him credit. No matter what else might be going on inside "Mr. Fiasco's" head right now, his expression does say to everyone that he's genuinely sorry. "But I'm confused. Why am I assigned to Coach Scott, and not Coach Spock, for the next few days?"

Bones isn't surprised when Pike gestures for Scotty to jump in and answer. "You're coming to see me, lad, because while we're a bit light when it comes to the wide receiver depth chart, we're positively anemic in terms of good kick returners. Rookie receivers and cornerbacks often end up serving more than one master anyway, so I'm going to be trying out you, Riley, and Burnett to see which one of you might be a good fit for me. Once we get that sorted, I'll send you all back to the offensive coordinator and the defensive coordinator, and then the three of us will talk about which of you I want them to share."

Kirk nods his head as he mulls that over. "Okay. You should know though that I haven't returned a kick since high school. My coach at Iowa didn't want me playing anything other than receiver," he adds as he steps back to where he was standing before.

Beside him, Bones can practically hear Nyota rolling her eyes. "Of course, he didn't," she mutters. "Heaven forbid they let one of their superstars go slumming on the special teams."

Scotty doesn't hear her, of course, as he answers, "Well, that's why we call it a try-out. We won't know until we see."

Kirk nods again, and Pike takes that as a signal to clap his hands and call everyone's attention back to him. "Okay," he says. "Everyone know where they're supposed to be today?"

A low murmur of "Yes, Coach" fills the room.

"Good." He pivots a bit in place, his movements that of a man who has long ago learned how to compensate for his ruined knee, and catches the eyes of as many people as he can. "Good," he says again. "Let's get out there then. We've got another championship to go chase."

The "Yes, Coach" is louder this time, and when the players move, there is a definite jump in some of their steps.

Bones find himself watching one player in particular, one who's got his hand pressed against his locker like he can't believe it's there. 

Kirk taps his fingers against the door like counting the little metallic echoes will convince him that it's real.

Then he joins a group of cornerbacks heading out towards the field, and in a matter of minutes, he and the rest of them are all gone.


End file.
